One Vote Annual Conference

We’ve all heard the phrase “data is the new oil”. There are few fields where this is as true as it is in politics. New age campaign methods use voting data extensively to build campaigns and shape the thoughts of voters. This in itself isn’t bad, but it becomes so when the data is so granular that it allows for micro-targeting of voters along caste and community lines, and when it can be used to systematically disenfranchise voters who are statistically unlikely to vote for a particular political party. This talk will explain some of the ways in which political parties use data in their campaigns, and how that would manifest in a world of electronic voting and blockcahins in elections.

Bio:

Shivam Shankar Singh is a data analyst, campaign consultant and author of the bestsellers, How to Win an Indian Election (Penguin, 2019) and The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities (HarperCollins, 2021). He started out in politics as a Legislative Assistant to a Member of Parliament (LAMP) Fellow and went on to witness the process of conjuring political realities while managing data analytics for some of India’s largest political parties.

He is a panelist on national television and writes for several news publications on data and politics. He graduated from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and is a 2021-22 Schwarzman Scholar.